Independents' policy advances align better with Labor

I don't think too many of us were surprised by Adam Bandt and Bob Brown's decision to support Julia Gillard and Labor, although there will certainly be some Labor hardliners who must shudder at the very thought of negotiating with the party.

The Labor-Greens deal formalises what many had expected. In return for lending Julia Gillard a crucial lower house vote, The Greens gain a seat at the table, considerable extra resources to formulate and cost their policies, some concessions on things like high-speed rail and a debate on Afghanistan, and real leverage on the eventual shape of any Labor climate change legislation.

But then again, the Senate numbers dictated they would get most of this anyway, so the real importance of the deal is that it clears the way for Labor to continue negotiations with the independents in earnest.

We've seen a lot of media coverage of the independents, of course. Lateline viewers got a taste of Rob Oakeshott's political philosophies last week. It was a rare media appearance by an Australian politician in which questions were answered fairly and genuinely, and policy issues were discussed knowledgeably. Oakeshott appears to have actually read the Garnaut Review, for instance, and knows the difference between a node and a home in broadband policy.

The wizened visage of Tony Windsor has also been popping up all over the place. Windsor has played his cards carefully in the interregnum that has ensued since the inconclusive results of August 21, saying that the key factor in his decision will be "stability". But what does "stability" really mean, and who could provide it? Could it be the Liberal-National Coalition, which has had four leaders in three years and contains a National Party that can barely hide its contempt for Windsor? Or would it be a Labor Party which deposed its own sitting prime minister only seven weeks before going to the election?

Australians are likewise getting to know Andrew Wilkie better. The former Office of National Assessments analyst who will become the independent member for Denison has issued a list of "priorities" that he wishes to see addressed by whoever forms government. Some of the priorities are classic local member issues: a huge redevelopment for Royal Hobart Hospital, light rail for Hobart's northern suburbs, and an advanced broadband rollout in his home seat. Others are more typically the stuff of national policy debates: he wants to limit ruinous gambling on poker machines, include dental care in Medicare, set a price on carbon, enact federal whistleblower legislation, give more money to universities and reinstate a 2012 review of the Federal Government's schools funding system. On Wednesday morning, Wilkie announced that his discussions with Julia Gillard had been unsatisfactry and that he was now waiting to hear from Tony Abbott. "I've now received a formal proposal from the ALP for my support," he told Fairfax. "It's confidential - and unacceptable to me. I'm now waiting for one from the Coalition."

And then of course there is Bob Katter, who is continuing to provide the sort of material for satire that political humorists dream about. Over the weekend he was boasting about his fist-fighting prowess while this week he was holding forth on the "lightweight" climate change credentials of Ross Garnaut and Nicholas Stern. Katter's big hat and equally outsized personal style make it hard for many to take him seriously - which is something of a shame, because if you do take his various policy positions seriously, they turn out to be surprisingly consistent and electorally appealing. For instance, Katter wants to raise agricultural tariff barriers, a position Julia Gillard has ruled out, but one which many rural voters might agree with. We'd expect his rural north Queensland electorate would also support his demand for a $1 billion fund from mining royalties to be directed to north Queensland infrastructure, although it seems ironic that a strident critic of the Resource Super Profits Tax should now be an advocate for extra public spending from the proceeds of mining royalties.

So perhaps it's time to ask the all-important question: just who should the independents support?

I think the independents should support Labor - because the policy issues they themselves have advanced align better with Julia Gillard's incumbent government than with Tony Abbott's alternative.

I'm not arguing here that Labor will make a better government, or Julia Gillard a better prime minister. I'm simply pointing out that, if you look at the policy issues advanced by the independents, they line up better with Labor's stated positions than they do with the Coalition's.

Four salient issues stand out: the economy, regional investment, health and broadband. I've chosen these issues because they are the ones that all four of the independents have mentioned in their various list of demands.

The economic data and the proper costing of the major party's policies comes top of the list. As I've argued previously, the Coalition has been all over the shop on economic management this election. The centre-piece of the Coalition's economic policy platform is a non-issue: government debt. There's no doubt that too much government debt is a big problem. It's just that Australia has very little of it. Nor have the Coalition's attacks on Labor's wasteful spending convinced. We can all agree that some of Labor's spending programs have been poorly managed. But that's a sideline compared to the success of the current government's stimulus package, which avoided a devastating recession and now sees the Australian economy powering ahead. In contrast, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey have looked decidedly ill at ease when forced to discuss economic matters in any depth, repeatedly deferring to Andrew Robb's policy expertise. The low farce that ensued after Tony Abbott refused to release his own independent costings - only to cave in under pressure days later - underlined the Coalition's discomfort when it comes to budgets and the economy.

Quite apart from the rubbery figures the Coalition has put forward in the election campaign, there is a further economic issue for the independents to consider: public investment in the regions. All the independents, including Andrew Wilkie, are calling for substantial new federal investment in infrastructure and public services in their electorates. This is to be expected. But it flies in the face of what appears to be a dominant economic ideology in the Liberal Party, which broadly opposes public investment and government spending. You can see this attitude reflected in Liberal opposition to a swathe of this Labor Government's policies: the NBN, the schools stimulus, spending on e-health, even public investment in business coaching and advice for small businesses. The independents would be well advised to weigh this up when they consider which alternative government would actually deliver the spending they seek in their home seats.

On health, I think the independents will conclude that the incumbent Labor government offers a more comprehensive and better-funded suite of policies. Labor's health and hospitals reform package has a number of flaws, particularly in mental health, but it delivers key reforms in areas such as electronic health records, public finance reform for hospitals funding, more hospital beds in public hospitals, more training places for GPs, specialists and nurses - not to mention an agreement with every state and territory except Western Australia. The Coalition's health policies are more modest, except for their better-funded mental health policy, and they require savings to be found by axing important measures like the e-health reforms. Weighing up the competing health policies of the major parties, I would expect the independents to favour Labor's.

Broadband is another issue that has been nominated as critical by all four of Oakeshott, Katter, Windsor and Wilkie. There is a clear difference between the two policy platforms on broadband. Labor will build a high-tech, costly, future-proofed National Broadband Network, laying fibre into the homes of nine-tenths of Australian households. In contrast, the Coalition is offering a far more constrained, cost-effective and slower plan for building broadband infrastructure. It will be much more affordable, but far less effective. You'd think that for Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie, who have nominated broadband as a key issue, Labor's NBN is the better policy.

On the economy and campaign costings, on regional investment, on health and on broadband: Labor wins on all four.

Of course, this only matters if you think the independents really will weigh up the issues on the merits of competing policies. They might decide their own electorates favour a conservative government, or that they simply don't like one or other of the two leaders. Constitutionally, they don't have to give a reason at all.

But if policy is the deciding factor, we should expect the independents to side with the government.